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TurboGrafx-16

Resulting from a close collaboration between the Hudson Soft publisher and the electronics manufacturer NEC, PC-Engine appears in Japan in 1987, and then a few years later in North America as the TurboGrafx-16. Although its central microprocessor is an 8 bit, the US division is trying to pass the console for a 16 bit in order to compete with the rival consoles.

Over the years, the TurboGrafx-16 gets some improvements. Unfortunately, one of them bears the fatal blow to the career of the TG-16, the failed launch of the Super CD-ROM. While in Japan, almost all of the owned PC-Engine support CDs, making it a vital component, the Super CD is far too expensive. In addition, although there are hundreds of games in Japan on CD-ROM, most are RPGs full of voice and long texts that are expensive to translate. They will be sadly neglected.

The games that are translated, slowly but surely, unfortunately are not the best ones. Some great titles cannot be exploited in North America due to the exclusivity contracts that the developers signed with Nintendo, obliging them to release only NES versions.

In four years, the TurboGrafx-16 has never really managed to establish itself outside Japan (PC Engine) and, since then, NEC has not tried again to create a game console.